1. Related Technical Fields
Related technical fields include systems, methods, and programs that determine a travel-related time, such as, for example, navigation systems, methods, and programs.
2. Description of Related Art
Navigation systems using a travel time database that provides the time likely needed to travel through each section/link of a corresponding road network are known. In such conventional navigation systems, every link in the search area must have an individual time slice, i.e. an assigned travel time that depends on the arrival time at the starting point of the link. The individual time slice varies with the arrival time. FIG. 11 shows an example of the time slice (link travel time) for one link over the time of a day. A corresponding travel time database typically includes such data on a 24-hour/7-days-a-week base. In route searching applications, the time slice to be used for each link is unknown before the time slice of the previous link is decided, as it is clear from FIG. 12.
EP 1 496 338 A2 describes another approach for route searching, wherein statistically processed historical traffic data is used for a timeslice-based route searching. The system is based on a client-server-structure, in which all the possible departure and destination location/time combinations are considered and stored as pre-calculated data sets. At the time of a calculation request for a corresponding time slice to be used for calculation, the corresponding data set will be sent from the server with all the necessary information.
JP 2004-301677 A describes another approach for a timeslice-based route searching based on statistically processed historical traffic data, wherein the arrival time for a specific mesh-area is calculated using the distance between the target mesh and the departure mesh, after a corresponding destination was defined.